ABSTRACT
The grand issue was America, but England and France were clashing all over the globe. William Pitt threw all he had into the struggle: his genius for instant decisions, his half-instinctive knowledge of foreign affairs, his arrogant bent toward dictatorship, his tremendous talent for inspiring those he led. As France went from liberty toward anarchy, England — in an access of panic — went from liberty to reaction. England's early joy in seeing the empire-greedy Bourbons balked of their ambitions was soon succeeded by a distrust of where the republicans were heading, by a dislike of where they soon arrived, by a horror at where they might next advance. But on few things in history have the enlightened members of a country, even those habitually conservative, been more fully agreed than on the folly and injustice that provoked the American Revolution.
